A Stolen Childhood by Ilmars Salts

Author:Ilmars Salts [Salts, Ilmars]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Virtualbookworm.com Publishing
Published: 2012-11-29T16:00:00+00:00

The Auxiliary Farm

The military hospital’s auxiliary farm consisted of two plain wood-frame buildings, a barn for the cows and calves, a stable, public baths, a cellar and a kitchen with a large pot cemented into the stove. Behind the cow barn at the edge of the old river was a fenced-in pasture that became a veritable swamp whenever it rained. On the other side was a vegetable garden protected by a fence made of interwoven branches. There was very little arable land and the primary crops were oats, potatoes and cabbage, with beets and turnips for the animals. Most of the area consisted of grazing land and meadows, interspersed with shrubbery.

There were about eight workhorses, half a dozen oxen, thirty milk cows, two breeding bulls, some calves and a small flock of sheep. Later, when another barn was built, there were also pigs. With no tractors on the farm, tasks that required pulling were performed by long-horned oxen and horses. As far as agricultural tools, there were a few plows, a harrow, a seeding machine, a grass mower and a horse-drawn thresher. There were also a couple of wagons, a sled and a large distillery keg, on which I got to ride.

The director of the farm, Sergey Grigoryevich Visocky, was a man past middle-age. He put my mother to work in the kitchen as a cook and designated me the new sheep herder. The previous sheep herder, Juhan – a Finn deported from Leningrad and a year or two older than me – was glad to be done with it and eager to show me the ropes while imparting some of his own trade secrets.

Generally, getting a job was easy. But finding a place to live was a different story. The room we were supposed to occupy was being used as winter quarters for the calves. Visocky promised to free up the space but in the meantime we were to stay with Liza, the calf minder.

We found Liza in the courtyard and she led my mother and me to the farthest house, where she lived. I was following a short distance behind them and had paused at the porch steps when I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my leg. A dog had appeared out of nowhere and sunk its teeth into my calf. I screamed with pain and tried to shake off my attacker. Liza and my mother ran over and helped extricate my leg from the jaws of Naida, who as it turned out had recently given birth to two pups, who happened to be under the porch. There wasn’t much blood, but I had three bite marks on my leg – one large and deep, the other two not as bad.

We went inside the house and Liza found a clean cloth, tore off a strip and tied it around my leg. I remember her saying we should catch Naida, cut off a tuft of her fur, burn it and apply the ashes to my wound, but my mother dismissed her suggestion.

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